Defendants daughter testifies for prosecution in murder trial

James Douglas Bussey

The daughter of a man charged in the 1993 shooting death of his wife told jurors in Anniston Wednesday that she believes her father, James Douglas Bussey,  killed her stepmother.

28 year old Amber Bussey,  told the court on the third day of her father’s trial that her stepmother, Diana Bussey, and the defendant had been arguing the day she was shot. Bussey said she heard the victim tell her father that she was leaving him and taking their 6-month-old baby, Amber’s stepbrother.

The 21-year-old victim worked as a clerk at the Exxon Discount Food Mart on Alabama 202 in Bynum. A customer found her fatally shot in the head at the store shortly after midnight on June 26, 1993.

Bussey,  of Leesburg was indicted by a grand jury in May 2011, charged with murder in connection with his wife’s death.

Amber Bussey said that a few days after the shooting she overheard a conversation that her father, known as Doug, had with her grandfather, Marvin Bussey, in a shed in the backyard.

She told the jury that Doug was wanting to get rid of a gun ... he had killed his wife, she said her grandfather told Bussey that he worked for a road building company, and could have the gun paved over.

In 2001, at the age of 16, Bussey said, she told investigators about that conversation.

Chris Hughes, an investigator with the Calhoun County District Attorney's Office and a former Sheriff’s Office investigator, told the court Wednesday that Amber Bussey came to him in 2001 and gave a statement, which he recorded into the case file. Supervisors at the Sheriff’s Office told him in 2001 to leave the matter alone.

The case was reopened in 2008 by the then newly-formed Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit.

Prosecutors rested the state’s case Wednesday, and defense attorneys plan to begin calling witnesses Thursday. Bussey is expected

to testify in his own defense